Sept. 12, 2006
Columbia, S.C. – South Carolina head football coach Steve Spurrier met with the media on Tuesday afternoon as the Gamecocks prepare this week to face Wofford on Saturday, Sept. 16 at 7 pm at Williams-Brice Stadium.
Opening Statement
Hopefully we can get on the scoreboard this week. We are obviously going to do some things differently on offense, see if we can create some points. We are looking forward to seeing if we can do that. Wofford is a very good team. Very impressive, watching them on tape. I think they have won more games, or have best winning percentage in the Southern Conference in the last three or four years, something like that. They know what they are doing. Coach Ayers and their staff have a plan that is very fundamentally sound, defensively. They don’t make many mistakes; they force you to beat them. Offensively, they run the ball extremely well with an option style attack, probably the only offense we will see like that this year. Our defensive coaches have put in a little extra time trying to figure out all the assignments to stop the option run game. Anyway, should be a heck of a game. I was watching tape of the Southern Conference, first time I have seen a lot of those schools; Coastal Carolina, David Bennett does a super job down there, Buddy Pough, South Carolina State, those teams are well coached. I was impressed watching a bunch of them play the last couple of days.”
On offensive changes
“There could be some scheme changes. We have to do something to try and create more offense, create getting the ball towards Sidney (Rice) and the other receivers and some big gains. We don’t want to divulge all our new plans but we will be a different looking offense, I’ll just say that to our fans. Hopefully, they hang with us a little while. Again, I’m embarrassed about the way we played the last game. Obviously, we did move the ball here and there. We got to the one-yard line, two-yard line but good teams can score second and goal from the two with three cracks and we couldn’t do it. Next time we got down to the two-yard line we tried to throw it in and we couldn’t do that either. We are reevaluating everything and trying to do some things differently around here.”
On the team’s blocking
“Most of our problems come down to blocking. If you are a pretty good offense, you usually block pretty well. We need to block, need to throw and catch, run better and those are my main worries.”
On status of Blake Mitchell
“Blake hit a guy’s helmet during the game and couldn’t finish and we put Chris Smelley in. Gosh, it was about eight minutes left when Chris went in there. I think his finger is a little bit sore but he should be fine on Saturday. He threw it around (last night) a little bit but he should be fine for this weekend.”
On Wofford’s defense
“Coastal (Carolina) (Wofford’s opponent last week) has a good offense. I would love to think that we could make a bunch of yards on Wofford but I don’t know, I don’t know until we go do it. We are a sort of an unknown group on offense right now. Like I said, they (Wofford) are fundamentally sound. Coastal made some plays on them, they hit some big plays. Their (Wofford) kids played extremely hard.”
On the team
“We have a pretty good team. We may start some freshmen lineman and all that, which most schools don’t, but that’s ok, that’s where we are right now. We just need to play better. You can ifs and buts the other night, five or six plays, and we certainly would have been in the game with a chance to win it, but we were sad on those five or six instances when we had a chance to be in the game and had a chance to win it. We are not that bad of a team but we are not that good right now, especially on offense, and we are going to try and get better.”
On the defense
“Certainly, I’m pleased with the defense. We did give up some rushing yards to Georgia and we gave up a bunch of them to them last year too. Last year we at least scored when we got in the red zone, this year we didn’t score at all. We do need to get better (on defense) though. We need to stop the run this week, try to force Wofford to throw the ball. If they get running up and down the field, we could be in for a long night.”
On playing a Div I-AA school
“I don’t really look at them as a I-AA or a Division I team, I look at them as another opponent on the schedule. We play 12 teams and we try to get ready to play our best each time out. This is another time out, this is one of our 12 opponents and we will hopefully play much better, especially on offense than we’ve played all year. Until we do, we are just hoping. I don’t look at them like that; I look at them as another team that is trying to kick our tails. We understand it would be huge for Wofford to beat us or Clemson. It would be huge for Furman to beat one of the two big in-state schools. And if they beat us I guarantee you, we have no excuses, they are just better than us, that’s all I will say because we are going to be ready to play. Our team will be ready to play the best we can.”
On the 12-game schedule
“Yeah, I was for it. I don’t see any reason in the world why we can’t play 12 games. I think baseball plays about 75. Basketball, they go to the tournament, they play three or four nights, our men’s basketball team played four nights in a row. They ask football guys to play 12 games, one a week, of course, like I said earlier about that, my first head-coaching job was the USFL and we played 18 straight games, 18 straight weeks and there wasn’t any problem. We didn’t beat each other up in practice and really had very few injuries the entire year.”
On his concern with the team
Our biggest concern is football players. We are still trying to figure out who are best players are. Sometimes you can go through practices and practices, think you know who your best guys are, and then they turn on the lights, put you on television, put over 80,000 in the stands, and sometimes those maybe are not your best players. We are still trying to give guys opportunities that deserve a shot.”
On first-year players
“They’ve done fine. They’ve done very well. Those defensive kids, Captain Munnerlyn, Emanuel Cook, Rodney Paulk might play more this week, Eric Norwood may play a little more at defensive end, there is four guys right there. We could start a couple freshmen offensive lineman; potentially have five or six starters, who played in high school last year.
On Syvelle Newton returning from his injury
“Dr. Jeff Guy, who did the surgery, when he did it last year, we said is this a year-long injury or can he be back. He said he could be back, if he did his rehab, which he did. I would say he is 100 percent, the way he’s got the ball in his hands, and he can go. That’s obviously something we are looking at also.”
On Carlos Thomas as a threat as a kickoff returner
“I think so. Carlos, Captain Munnerlyn, Fred Bennett all had real good games against Georgia and the opener too. Carlos loves to play. He was hitting those kickoffs pretty hard there. We continue to remind him to hold the ball a little more secure, he sort of flags it out there occasionally. We just need to block a little bit better for him. He has a chance to go. We need to give Kenny McKinley a little more room on those punt returns. We need to block better and give those guys a chance. We need to block better with everything we do.”
On playing against the option
“It’s going to be something different for our guys. Normally against the teams we play, we stop the run with the tailback. Now you’ve got the fullback coming at you first, quarterback can run with it and a pitch guy here and there, a reverse guy, they (Wofford) run it very well. You saw what Air Force did to Tennessee last week. Tennessee looked awfully good against Cal and Air Force comes in there and got 30 on them some way or another. Hopefully we will be ready.”
On the play of the tailbacks
“The tailbacks played fairly well. Cory (Boyd) had some good runs. He had some good runs against MSU. I don’t know what we did run-wise last week, we thought we could bang it in at the goal line, and Cory sort of ran into a wall there. They need more carries, they need more room and we need to stay on the field. We can’t stay on the field very well. We are three and out, three and out, three and out. When we do stay out there, we find a way to drop the snap, some guy jumps offside, we are not a very disciplined team. That is what is embarrassing to me, to Coach Hunt. That’s why you make changes, find some guys who can play with some discipline.”
